An Old Moleskine

 

3/4/26 photo reference

I’ve lately had less need for my doomscrolling prevention program. It helps that we’ve flipped the clocks forward, and the Big Dark is over. Gloom and doom in the news is somehow easier to bear when there’s still light left after dinner. In a few weeks, I’ll be able to take short golden hour walks again – the best time to simply enjoy walking without a fitness goal or destination.

After being inspired initially by Orla Stevens’ mixed media and other approaches (even imaginative), I seem to have settled into monochrome sketches using Derwent Drawing pencils. It’s the most relaxing and therefore the most direct in taking my mind off whatever unpleasantness it might be occupied with.

3/18/26 photo reference

Trees in the urban landscape from my own camera roll are an easy go-to. But recently I was thinking about all the portraiture I practiced several years ago using Earthsworld’s reference photos. I’m very rusty, and portraiture always includes some tension because I can’t shake the desire for resemblance. But portraiture also offers interesting challenges that continue to captivate me, even if more mental energy is required.

The prompt for portraiture came from the sketchbook I used for these three sketches: a very old Moleskine that contains that weird, heavy, manila-folder-like paper. The first half of the book is filled mainly with portraits I made with ballpoint pen or marker – the ideal media for use on this smooth, strangely water-repellent paper. Since the surface feels similar to Stillman & Birn Zeta, I thought I’d give it a try with Derwent Drawing pencils – and I like it! Those soft pencils seem to glide effortlessly. (My mission to complete partially filled sketchbooks continues!)

3/18/26 Earthsworld reference photo

Skimming the portraits gave me a heavy pang. Dated 2022 and 2023, those portraits were a large part of my original doomscrolling prevention program: Instead of news reports of current events, I was doomscrolling my own anxiety as I taught myself how to navigate caregiving responsibilities. Despite all that is going on in the world now, nothing in the current media gives me as much pain and stress as that period of my life did. Seeing the portrait practice gives me compassion for my former self, and I feel much gratitude.

Boon-Boona Coffee Finally Opens

 

3/17/26 Boon Boona Coffee, Waterfront Overlook

Ever since the Waterfront Overlook opened, it’s been obvious that some sort of venue was planning to move into the new space adjacent to a large area of outdoor seating. The eagerly anticipated venue finally opened: Boon-Boona Coffee, a small local chain focusing on African beans. Roy, Mary Jean and I wasted no time in checking it out. As we’d hoped, it’s a spacious, pleasant venue with excellent coffee and a view of Elliott Bay and Overlook visitors through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Even better, the sheltered outdoor seating is open to the public, so it will be a great location for large USk gatherings when it warms up. I especially appreciate that the patio ceiling is mostly glass, so it still lets in light on overcast days.

On that cold, drizzly morning, I sketched the mostly empty tables outside, wistfully dreaming of warmer days. Halfway through, I regretted taking on the perspective of all those tables and chairs lined up almost in a straight line, but not quite (top of post).

In my sketch journal (below), I relieved myself of the perspective frustration by doing another sketch of the tables and chairs – this time as a blind contour!

After brunch at Pike Place Bar & Grill (end of post), we sneaked in some outdoor sketching at Pike Place Market before the rain returned again. A vintage farm truck had become almost iconic near the information stand behind it. Its purpose is to block auto traffic from entering Pike Place (which is now pedestrian-only except for delivery trucks). At some point last year, the truck had disappeared for a while. I was happy to see that it had returned. If it becomes reliably permanent, it would make a highly visible, easily identifiable “meet here” icon (I’ve always got potential USk outings on my mind).

Pike Place Market entrance

Material notes: Have I said lately how much I love Derwent Drawing Pencils? I may never use graphite again!

Pike Place Bar & Grill

Few and Far Between

 

3/14/26 Maple Leaf

The sketches I make while on my (nearly) daily fitness walks have been few and far between. I was encouraged, though, when I saw that our unexpected snowfall last week didn’t seem to have harmed any of the plum and cherry blooms that are just getting started. Though the temp was only in the mid-40s, I stopped to make a quick sketch to celebrate the victory (at left).

I’ve included sketches here that I made at cafés when I had to duck indoors to warm up before continuing on. Yes, they count, because sometimes I can’t kick my butt out the door unless I promise myself a break along the way.

Sketchbook notes: You heard me muttering recently about wanting white paper as a daily-carry during pink tree season but not wanting to carry a second book, yada-yada-yada. After the small Stillman & Birn didn’t work out, I chose a lavender Uglybook as my next daily-carry. It’s pale enough that pink shows up OK – a good compromise during a precious season. When I go out for serious petal peeping, I’ll bring a larger white sketchbook, of course.

1/23/26 Maple Leaf Park

1/27/26 Green Lake

2/4/26 Maple Leaf Park

2/18/26 PCC cafe

2/19/26 view from Macrina Bakery

3/2/26 Green Lake

3/3/26 Maple Leaf

Cozy SAM (Where Derwent Pencils Win Again)

 

3/15/26 Mountains, Alexander Calder, Seattle Art Museum

On a chilly morning following our freaky snowfall, I was more than happy to spend a few hours with USk inside the cozy Seattle Art Museum. Since my white Derwent Drawing pencil with black paper have been serving me well at art museums, both SAM and the Asian Museum, I gave them a shot on Calder’s work, Mountains, which I hadn’t seen before. All black, the sheet-metal sculpture stands with the dark elevators behind it on one side, so I walked around it to find an angle with a lighter-colored background (above). That’s when I discovered the round hole in the center – such a beautiful counterpoint to all the sharp angles.

That took longer than I wanted; by the time I was done, I was ready for lunch. As Kate and I chatted over our lunches at the SAM café, I caught a sideview of the whimsical Little Cloud Sky, an installation hanging over the lobby (the front view I sketched several months ago shows the clouds’ smiling faces).

SAM cafe and lobby

I had time for one more sketch before the throwdown. I went back upstairs where a horse had caught my eye earlier. By contemporary artist Deborah Butterfield, life-size Pascal is made of steel and iron. Instead of white on black, I pulled out a couple of dark Derwent Drawing pencils and a Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook (my favorite paper pairing with these luscious pencils).

Pascal, Deborah Butterfield

With graphite, I never really enjoyed sketching inside museum exhibits. But the restriction is “pencil,” not graphite, and Derwent Drawing pencils have liberated me!

Master Copies of Van Gogh

 

3/10/26 Master copy of Vincent Van Gogh

A website called Draw Paint Academy recently crossed my radar; in particular, an article about the lesser-known works of Vincent Van Gogh. Since I have no formal education in art history, I appreciate learning from writers who can talk about masterworks in a layperson’s language without getting all academic-y.

Two paintings caught my attention: Trees in the Asylum Garden and Saint-Paul Hospital Park (both from 1889). Especially struck by the vibrant color contrasts and dynamic brush strokes (the paintings seem to shimmer and vibrate), I felt inspired to make master copies.

I wasn’t going to use oil paints, of course, but I thought about what dry medium at my disposal might be able to emulate those hatchmark-like brush strokes. Although I hadn’t used them in a long time, Prismacolor Art Stix had come up in a recent conversation with Roy and Mary Jean, so they were out on my desk. Basically block-shaped colored pencils on steroids, they could make flat, broad strokes, and my set includes a good range of colors. Why not? (Related geeky afterthought: Imagine if Derwent made their Drawing Pencil cores in a block form! Be still my heart!)

It’s always instructive and illuminating to copy a masterwork. For one thing, the palettes of these two paintings look so cohesive that I thought the range of hues would be fairly limited, but once I started trying to match them all, I was surprised by how many colors are in them. You know me and my limited palettes; these were boldly outside my comfort zone!

3/12/26 Master copy of Vincent Van Gogh

I noticed that Van Gogh liked to outline shapes with a dark color. Did he “draw” the shapes first and then fill them in? Or did he paint the shapes, and outline later? I’ve seen this in his other works too, but it wasn’t until I copied these myself that I studied the paintings with those questions in mind. The technique caught my attention because it flies in the face of the traditional painting instruction we read in books or hear from instructors: Objects in reality never have lines around them; avoid drawing them (or avoid letting them show in the painting).

One thing I had difficulty with, especially using a dry medium, was covering the entire “canvas” with color as he did (and as most painters do). Sometimes I think this is one of the biggest differences between a sketcher (at least this sketcher) and a painter: I never feel compelled to cover the entire page, and, in fact, I prefer to leave white space. That’s just my style, but it’s also a limitation of my chosen media. It would be impractical and time consuming to cover every speck of paper surface with colored pencils or even crayons. With none of the grace but maybe at least some of the energy, I tried my best to emulate the spirit of Van Gogh’s gestures.

There’s plenty more to study and learn from copying Van Gogh (or any master). I’ll put this in my doomscrolling prevention tool kit. It seems like master copying might be too mentally taxing for late-evening work, and it was certainly not relaxing as, for example, sketching from my own reference photos with Derwent Drawing pencils. But trying to emulate another work takes away the need to be expressive in my own way. In any case, I recommend it.

No limited palette for Vincent!

One Week 100 People, Year 10, Part 2

 

3/12/26 Green Lake Starbucks

What would have been Day 3 turned out to be too busy to sketch people, but I kept apace on Day 4. I began in the morning at Starbucks, where I caught a crew of Seattle Public Utility workers, five men of all colors, taking a long break with lively discussions. I wish I could have composed them all on the same page, but sometimes some were blocked, then others, and I was afraid they’d all get up and leave at any moment.

Although I caught a few on my walk, most of the rest came from my parked car at a Northgate strip mall. It wasn’t as busy as the grocery store where I had sketched earlier, so I had to be more patient; it must be like waiting in a duck blind! Bonus points: three dogs!

3/12/26 Green Lake and Northgate 

Northgate Plaza strip mall parking lot

We all woke on Friday the 13th, the final day of One Week 100 People, to the season’s unseasonable first snowfall! Whaaat??! As I’m skittish about driving if I see even one flake falling, I gratefully accepted Kim’s offer of a ride to Bellevue Square retail mall. It’s become an annual tradition for USk Seattle to work on 100 People there. Despite the joint outing with Eastside Sketchers, the snow must have kept many away, as we had a small turnout.

3/13/26 Bellevue Square

The mall is always a fruitful location for drawing people – so many small stories everywhere. It’s also just a fun place to people-watch. So different from Seattle, the women really dress to the nines in Bellevue. I especially enjoyed the formidable challenge of sketching people walking up and down stairs, which was easy to see through the transparent walls of the stairwells.

I apparently can't count while I draw!

I thought I was done, but as I waited for others to show up for the throwdown, I couldn't resist
drawing this dog (only one of two I saw at the mall that day)!

I was planning to sketch all 100 people in the large lavender Uglybook, but I didn’t estimate well and ran out of pages on Day 4. I had just enough left in the orange book, though, to finish off One Week 100 People. With that, I could put both the large lavender and the large orange Uglybooks into my bookcase of completed sketchbooks (I’ve officially decided that this is the year of completing partially filled sketchbooks).

Small but hardy turnout!

One Week 100 People, Year 10, Part 1

 

3/9/26 Metro Market parking lot, Crown Hill neighborhood

Although I participate in a few annual drawing challenges regularly and others more sporadically, my all-time favorite is One Week 100 People. Reading Marc Taro Holmes’ blog reminded me that this was the 10^th year of the challenge, which means I’ve participated for 10 consecutive years!

If you scroll through all the years, you’ll see that my style hasn’t changed much, nor has my goal: To capture people from life as simply as possible but also as unique individuals, not generic symbols. At least one year, I went to a studio life-drawing session for some part of the hundred. During the pandemic, I made self-portraits from a mirror – the only year I didn’t hit a hundred! All the other sketches were done in public spaces capturing whoever I saw. It’s all been so much fun while being great practice.

Sketching from my car in a grocery store parking lot has become a reliable though challenging standby: A regular stream of people going in and out. My favorite part is when they load groceries into their cars. With only seconds per sketch, it’s often frustrating, but I enjoy that tension. By comparison, Metro Market’s café was slow.

Metro Market cafe

That was Day 1. The next day, Roy, Mary Jean and I met at Third Place Commons to work on our hundred together. We all noted that the place was full of ideal “victims”: Some groups held meetings; others played cards. A crafting group was working on needlework and knitting; another group was painting and drawing. I caught a trio of bluegrass musicians jamming together. The best part: Almost everyone hardly moved!

3/10/26 Third Place Commons, Lake Forest Park

(Stay tuned for the rest of the week in Part 2.)